V. I. Lenin

Among the Newspapers and Magazines (June 28, 1906)

Written:Written on June 28 (July 11), 1908Published:Published on June 29, 1906 in the newspaperEkhoNo. 7.

      Printed from theEkhotext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 41,

      pages183.2-184.Translated:Yuri SdobnikovTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marxists.org)
      © 2004

      Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the
      terms of theGNU Free Documentation License.

Followingthe unsuccessful affair of the
Cadet-Octobrist-official ministry, the government has tried to scare the
Cadets with the prospect of a dictatorship. Now the Cadets are trying to
scare the government with the prospect of a revolution.Rechwrites:

“Theconflagration is spreading—such is the impression
   of the news coming by cable from every corner of Russia.... It is no longer
   the revolutionary intelligentsia or even the working class that is aflame;
   the peasantry, the troops are aflame too. That is, it is more correct to
   say that the whole of Russia is in flames.... At the slightest pretext, the
   peasants flock in their thousands to deal summarily with the authorities,
   the landowners, the estates and the manors.”

“Theconflagration is spreading—such is the impression
   of the news coming by cable from every corner of Russia.... It is no longer
   the revolutionary intelligentsia or even the working class that is aflame;
   the peasantry, the troops are aflame too. That is, it is more correct to
   say that the whole of Russia is in flames.... At the slightest pretext, the
   peasants flock in their thousands to deal summarily with the authorities,
   the landowners, the estates and the manors.”

Onthe subject of this “conflagration”, Prof. Gredeskul hastens to
show the depth of his understanding of the historical events:

“Weare undoubtedly on the eve of crucial
   events.Either the government will come to its senses within the next
   few days and hand the power over to a Duma ministry, or it will bring us to
   the greatest disasters.”

“Weare undoubtedly on the eve of crucial
   events.Either the government will come to its senses within the next
   few days and hand the power over to a Duma ministry, or it will bring us to
   the greatest disasters.”

Andso, it is either a revolution or a Cadet ministry. It is not
surprising at all that a Cadet tries to use everything, the people’s
spontaneous revolutionary activity above all, to demonstrate the need for a
Cadet ministry. However, he is labouring under a delusion: the antidote—a
Cadet ministry—which the Cadet quacks are now prescribing for the
revolution will not work against the poison of spontaneous revolutionary
action by the mass, against its urge, to whichRechitself
testifies, to realise its right to freedom of assembly (not the Cadet
freedom of assembly, but full freedom) and to all the land.

Youcan go on trying hard, gentlemen, but the revolution has coped with
the Witte-Durnovo system, and it will also cope with the Cadet antidotes.

Itis either a revolution or a Cadet ministry, saysRechand
adds: we beg to inform you that we, for our part, are net afraid of the
revolution, whereas you are going to get hurt. But those who know how to
take a militant stand at a fighting moment are well aware of the worth of
such talk.Novoye
Vremya,{1}an organ of the pogromites and sergeant-majors, is also
well aware that Messrs. Gredeskuls give a reminder of the revolution only
because they fear it like the plague. That is why NovoyeVremya,
we believe, gives a much better exposé of the psychology and
political substance of the deal which is being prepared, when it says:
“Messrs. Cadets, we both have the same fear of the revolution, but we have
almost exhausted our resources in the struggle against it, and you still
have a thing or two left, which is why you should get on with it and not
drag things out for too long.” That is just what they are saying. The
Cadets say: we for our part can afford to wait. But theNovoye
Vremyagentlemen urge: come, make haste, the revolution is pressing.

Thelatest issue ofNovoye Vremyasays as much:

“...therewill be an explosion the responsibility for
   which will fall not only on the present ministry, but also on the Cadet
   Party, which is guilty of the fact that being reluctant, for want of
   courage, to lose a part of its popularity among the extreme Left-wingers,
   it has led the Duma into a fatally drawn-out conflict and has committed a
   crime against the law of peaceful evolution, insisting on an immediate
   militant implementation of a political programme, a process which requires
   a very, very long time.”

“...therewill be an explosion the responsibility for
   which will fall not only on the present ministry, but also on the Cadet
   Party, which is guilty of the fact that being reluctant, for want of
   courage, to lose a part of its popularity among the extreme Left-wingers,
   it has led the Duma into a fatally drawn-out conflict and has committed a
   crime against the law of peaceful evolution, insisting on an immediate
   militant implementation of a political programme, a process which requires
   a very, very long time.”

That’show things are: there is a bit of bargaining, a bit of scaring,
and then a deal is done, for they have a common cause and a common aim.

{1}Novoye Vremya(New Times)—a daily published in
St. Petersburg from 1868 to 1917 by various publishers, repeatedly changing
its political orientation. Moderately liberal at first, it became an organ
of reactionary landowner and official bureaucratic circles in 1876, when
A. S. Suvorin took over as publisher. From 1905—an organ of the Black
Hundreds. After the bourgeois-democratic revolution in February 1917, the
paper gave total support to the counter-revolutionary policy of the
bourgeois Provisional Government and fiercely attacked the Bolsheviks. It
was closed down by the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Petrograd
Soviet on October 26 (November 8), 1917.

p. 184